Web Hosting Reviews and Tips

Web hosting is a sort of Internet facility that permits organizations and individuals to have their own website accessibility through the World Wide Web. The companies that offer space on a server with Internet connectivity are known as Web hosts or Web hosting providers.

Among the wide-ranging exploits of web hosting, web page and small-scale file hosting has been rated as the most basic one, wherein files are uploaded via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or a Web Interface.

Personal web site hosting comes generally free, while the business web site hosting entails comparatively higher expense. For personal web pages, a single page hosting is more than enough. On the contrary, a complex site necessitates a more intense package that offers database support and application development platforms like PHP, Java, and ASP.NET.

 

Web hosting is generally presented as part of a general Internet access plan, and you can come across several schemes of free and paid web hosting providers providing these services. It entirely depends upon a customer to decide what kind of hosting to use. Reaching to a certain decision comprises of considering database server software, scripting software, and operating system. Majority of the web hosting providers endow with Linux-based web hosting that provides a thick array of different software. If you look at a basic configuration for a Linux server, you will get to know concepts like the LAMP platform: Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/ Perl /Python.

The web hosting client can expect to comprise the services, like email for their business domain, databases or multi-media services for streaming media. Besides, a customer might well make up his/ her mind for having Windows for its hosting platform. The customer would have PHP, Perl, and Python, and also go with ASP .Net or Classic ASP for the purpose of facilitating website development. Generally, a Web Content Management System is included in Web hosting packages. This reduces the worry of the end-users about the more technical aspects.

Web hosting providers can also provide allied services, like monthly backups, web design services and domain registration, apart from doling out even conference rooms in their data centers.

Since the dawn of Internet, there has been a constant and unprecedented growth in the number of websites registering daily. These websites are assigned a space in the World Wide Web, distinguished from others with a unique domain name.

The Web Hosting Services are also witnessing a subsequent growth. The web host companies now-a-days offer different types of Web Hosting services right from free, to costly to costlier. Free Web Hosting Services, to talk about, are hardly instrumental for any online business. They provide a little space on web that doesn’t allow you to upload enough web pages, hence impotent in detailing your business properties.

If you are a newbie in availing Web Hosting services, it is advisable to find a Web Hosting Company that can guide you through.

You can start your search of a reputed Web host company on net, and circle in few companies with a sound history. This doesn’t need any rocket science. You can rely upon your knowledge and zero in the companies that have a copious clientele list, satisfactory testimonials that act as referees, and provide maximum number of services. You can also take advice from their help desks of whether you need Shared or Dedicated Web Hosting. Weigh the pros and cons of both the services, and decide accordingly.

Shared Web Hosting seems a good choice for medium scaled businesses. To mention the good point- you pay less and stay free from managing the network resources. To mention the not-so-good point- with dozens, or may be hundreds of websites sharing the same web server, the chances of errors are more. So you don’t get the chance to achieve much with a shared host.

Availing the Dedicated Web Hosting services is a wonderful move if you have a large scaled online business. The benefits of Dedicated Web Hosting are many. You get SSH or Shell access and get a full control on your website. And as yours’ would be the only site that the server would host, the chances of downtime minimizes. The physical location of Dedicated Web Host servers is also at the specialized data centers that promise optimal performance.

The purpose of this article is not to divert you from one web host service to another. Shared Web Hosting, despite limited features, is hugely successful. On the other hand Dedicated Web Hosting provides ample features, and still is not for everyone. The choice is all yours!

Even for a layman , its important to know the concept of web hosting. Visiting any website shows a web page that is downloaded from the web server onto the user’s web browser. Generally, web site is made up of many web pages and web page is made up of texts and graphic images. Now these pages are then stored and made available for the visitors on web servers.

So for a layman if his intention is to have is own web site, then the first step would be owing a host provider so as to host the website on web server. As soon as the website is online on the server, online users can browse that website through Internet. All this job of providing host facility is with the providers called web-hosting providers.

Any established web hosting provider can host even thousands of websites example, iPowerWeb is a popular web hosting company that hosts websites in amounts of lakhs i.e. 3 lakhs. Due to this reason only these hosting companies needs large number of web servers for storing the website. Thereafter all these web servers are connected to Internet and are kept in a physical center ‘data center’. As these web servers needs to be fully operational all the time so data centers are made fully secure having 24/7 environment and given protection from fire, HVAC temperature control, virus detections, computer data backup, redundant power backup and complete disaster recovery capabilities.

Now after knowing what is web hosting it is also important to know the different types of web host which are summarized below:

Shared Hosting

As the name suggests, in shared hosting several websites share space on the common physical web servers. A physical web server can host thousands of websites at one time depending upon the web host. With so much pressure on web servers it tends to make one think that due to over burden perhaps the performance of web server gets affected. But that thinking is totally wrong as for this reason only web servers are equipped with high-end powerful computer so as to support large number of websites to some extent without any problem. However but it is even possible at time of over burden on web servers that the response is badly effected.

In order to get rid of this problem reputed and experienced host providers constantly keep on monitoring the performance of web servers and keeps on adding new web servers when and where required. As many websites share a same physical web server the cost is generally low with start from mere $5-$20 per month and they also have to accept slower server response time.

Dedicated Hosting

As against shared hosting, in dedicated hosting a specific web server is allotted to one customer only. Due to one server the customer is having option to host his single/multiple web sites, can modify the configuration of software, can handle greater site traffic and can even scale the bandwidth when it is taken as necessary. It is because of this facility that dedicated hosting charges good amount which starts from $50 and can range even upto$200 to $500 monthly. So dedicated hosting is regularly used by extremely important web sites having high traffic.

Co-location hosting

The only difference between dedicated hosting and co-location hosting is that here in this case customers can own the web server hardware whereas in case of dedicated hosting customers can just rent the web server during the hosting period. So Co-location hosting provides more flexibility to its customers in respect of control and maintainence. Here in this case 24/7 server monitoring is also possible which can evade the problem of slow response. Because of all above benefits co-location hosting charges good amount depending upon monthly bandwidth and rack space required which is as high as $500 – $1000 monthly.

Reseller hosting

The third type of hosting is reseller hosting where the provider offers web server storage space to third party at a discounted price, who again resell it to his own customer. Normally resellers include web consultants like web designers, developers or system Integration Company who after charging commission which is even upto 50%(taken as discount) can resell the web hosting. Resellers can set up their own hosting company and can decide for their own pricing structure with establishing their own branding.

In case of reseller hosting for reseller’s customers, the reseller is the web host provider. When some technical problem arises like down server or any access problem then in that case the resellers have to settle all with actual web host provider. However this is not the effective way as it leads to unnecessary waste of time due to various channels involved in the communication process like first customer contacts reseller and then reseller contacts actual web host provider and same is with the response it also comes back from the same process, so the problems pertains for a long time. Thus reseller hosting is not considered a good option unless user is having his own personal website or he is having an alternative for poor support from reseller.

Now with growing competition market is having abundant of resellers who are selling their services at a very low price. Due to this and other factors like even some web-hosting providers provide their own toll free numbers to their resellers for co-branded technical support, this makes the decision more difficult to choose which is the right choice.

Thus it is more important to act wisely and to not get attracted with marketing techniques employed by resellers like professional outlook of their website and other strategies like proving technical support in their own name which is actually provided by the provider and not by them but they tend to present it in such a way that they are providing that support.

The general distinguishing feature between resellers and hosting company is firstly the hosting price and secondly the company’s information including their balance sheet example iPowerWeb.com get their company’s information published where they mention their financial strength, their offices and highly equipped data centers. As against this resellers lack these assets and for price what they quote is generally below $5 per month whereas providers charge between $7 and $10.

Thus considering all these facts it can be concluded easily that due to a minute difference of several dollars one must not get struck in the web of resellers and must go for best facilities instead of getting harassment afterwards.